Wesleyan University The Honors College From Venice to Byzantium and Back: Relations between Venetians and Greeks, 1200-1600 by Rebecca E. Malik Class of 2009 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in History and Italian Studies Middletown, Connecticut April, 2009 Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………. iii Preface………………………………………………………………………………. iv Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1. Imperial Venice and the Greek People 1204-1453…………………………………………………………....12 Chapter 2. Venice as a Center of Greek Learning c. 1500 ……………………………………………………………….43 Chapter 3. Venetians in Constantinople and Greeks in Venice 1200-1600 …………………………………………………………...70 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...99 Maps………………………………………………………………………………..105 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..111 ii Acknowledgements I would first and foremost like to thank my thesis advisor Professor Laurie Nussdorfer for her priceless help developing and executing this topic throughout the last year. I do not know if I would have had the courage or the skills to tackle this thesis without your guidance and support. I would also like to thank all those who have given me direction throughout my research process including my advisor in History, Professor Gary Shaw, my advisor in Italian, Professor Marcello Simonetta, Professor Nadja Aksamija, Professor Khachig Toloyan, Giancarlo Casale, Alan Nathanson, and Melanie Schaan. And of course I would also like to thank my parents for their continued love and support. You have always encouraged me to take on new challenges and experiences, whether it was my semesters abroad in Greece and Italy or my semesters in Olin in my thesis carrel. iii Preface Two years ago, traveling through Greece, it seemed to me that everywhere I went, I ran into Venice. A port city here, fortifications there; almost a dozen of my destinations had been “under Venetian control” for “long periods of time.” Within the first half of my semester studying in Athens I had seen the Venetian strongholds in Euboea, Naufplion, Monemvasia, and Crete. I remember standing in the port city of Chania, or Candia as the Venetians called it, thinking to myself, “If I’m in Greece, why do I keep running into Venice?” My Spring Break travels with my family to Santorini and Corfu peaked this curiosity even further. Walking through the streets of Corfu Town, hearing Greek spoken with a strange accent, I felt as though I was back in Italy. Eating a cuisine that delightfully resembled Italian more than the greasy gyros, keftedes, and patatopita I had been enjoying for the past months, I knew I wanted to explore this intriguing mixture of cultures. A year later, standing in Piazza San Marco, I looked up at the Basilica for the first time in almost a decade. I had forgotten how amazing the city was, how grand and impressive. But I found myself noticing that the church standing before me was profoundly different from those I had seen in my new home in Bologna and my travels through northern Italy. When I asked myself why, I realized it was none other than the influence of the Byzantines. The Greeks! I had found them in Italy just as I had found Italians in Greece. As Hadrian’s Arch in Athens and the ruins of Siracusa in Sicily were the remnants of antiquity, this church and those fortresses were the remains of a later time. But when? I knew I had to study the story behind this fascinating connection between East and West. Am I prejudice for choosing Venice? I don’t think so. Never once did I run into Genoa when I was traveling through Greece. This is obviously a factor of where I chose to travel: I didn’t make it to the Dodecanese, the northeastern Greek isles, or the Northern areas of the Black Sea. However, I never sat down with a guidebook and looked for Venice either. I just stumbled upon her legacy in the Aegean, over and over again. And with this yearlong investigation into the relationship between Venice and Greece, I finally found the answers I was looking for. iv Introduction The lasting effects of the Greco-Venetian interactions of the late middle ages and early modern period are still evident today. From the Venetian ports scattered throughout the Aegean to the bronze horses on San Marco and the Biblioteca Marciana in St. Marks Square, even an unsuspecting tourist might see the undeniable evidence of a relationship between these members of East and West. It is obvious that the people of Italy and Greece have been interacting for millennia, starting in ancient Greece and ending, most notably, with the independence movements of the nineteenth century. This thesis will explore the era in which the dying Byzantine Empire saw the introduction and duration of a new Venetian Empire that partially took her place. The diverse ways in which the people of these opposing powers came in contact with one another will demonstrate the evolution in their relations from rivalry and opposition to alliance and cooperation. This thesis is a multi-faceted approach that explores how the relationship between Greeks and Venetians changed from 1200-1600 by examining, chronologically and thematically, the political and social elements that provided for this change. Through a focus on three key themes, the Venetian Empire in the East, Venice’s role as a center for Greek learning, and the communities of Venetians in Constantinople and Greeks in Venice, I will trace how this relationship experienced eras of conquering and exploitation, then welcoming and borrowing, and finally acculturation and assimilation. 1 The thirteenth to sixteenth centuries encompass a time of great change in the Eastern Mediterranean. Following the creation of the separate Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church with the Great Schism of 1054, Christianity was divided between East and West. With the Fourth Crusade of 1204, these divides were made even greater with the Latin crusaders’ conquest of Constantinople and the subsequent, yet temporary, displacement of the Byzantine Empire. After winning back the city in 1261 under the leadership of Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, the reaffirmed Byzantine Empire spent the next two centuries clinging to life, dealing with the superior forces of the trading empires of the Venetians and the Ottomans. Although Venice lacked sufficient ambition to conquer the Byzantines again and remained satisfied with her commercial monopoly of the area, the Turks were unrelenting. By 1453, the city of Constantinople had fallen to Ottoman forces; this time for good. In the following century and a half, in fear and uncertainty, the Greek people fled from their homes in the Eastern Mediterranean, many of them making their way to Western Europe. The relation between the Venetians and Greeks from the period from 1200 to 1600 is the subject of a diverse historiography that has shifted focus over time from extensive narrative histories based on chronicles to more complete and focused expeditions into social histories on a smaller-scale, drawing from archival material. With such a limited amount of primary source documentation still published today, scholarly works have come to rely most heavily on individual research in archives. However, in economic history a significant exception occurred during the first half of the twentieth century when limited amounts of archival material were published for 2 the first time. This dramatic change allowed the focus of historians to shift from political and military histories to more challenging investigations into economic and social history. Most historians have chosen to focus on a specific historical approach, whether it be political, military, economic, intellectual, or social, or have narrowed their questions to a single century or movement. However, I try to show how the diverse effects of these various forces and this long timeframe of four centuries provided for these changing interactions. With my comprehensive analysis of this relationship, focusing on the aspects of the story that experience the most contact between the two groups, the Venetian dominions in the East, the role of Greek émigrés in Renaissance humanism, and the coexistence of Venetians and Greeks in the cities of Constantinople and Venice, I have found that both groups were able to benefit from this contact, even though Venice always had the upper hand. For those historians who do not see this interplay as irrelevant, an examination of this interaction is always secondary to a historical question. However, with my broad survey of this period, the connection between these groups is the heart of my historical examination. Deno John Geanakoplos was a renowned scholar of Byzantine, Renaissance, and Orthodox Church history. Fluent in an astounding nine languages, Geanakoplos could use primary and secondary material from a myriad of sources.1 Although some of his conclusions have recently been critiqued, Geanakoplos is incredibly important 1 Geanakoplos knew nine languages: English, Italian, Latin, French, German, Russian and ancient, Byzantine and modern Greek. He was also the recipient of the Gold Cross of the Order of King George I in 1966, a Greek decoration awarded to him for his cultural contributions, and was named Archon “Teacher of the People” by the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in Constantinople in 1975. For more on his life, see “Former prof. dies at 91,” Yale Daily News, 11 October 2007. 3 for bringing new views